


Touch-A Touch Me

by skarletfyre



Series: The Learning Curve [2]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Scout is just one big walking ''no homo''
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 08:42:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2185221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skarletfyre/pseuds/skarletfyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As preoccupation veers into obsession, how far is Scout willing to go to get the doctor's attention?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touch-A Touch Me

So maybe things were starting to get a little out of hand.

He hadn't  _meant_ to get the BLU Pyro's attention. Well maybe he had initially, but being chased around by a lunatic with a flamethrower wasn't the outcome he had in mind.

Scout reflected, as he ran for his life, that it didn't start out like this. A month ago, he couldn't have cared less if the Pyro turned their Medic to toast, at least no more than in the the sense that it'd be a bitch to wait for him to Respawn. But things had changed over the last couple weeks. And Scout was still trying to figure out what it all meant.

It started with the hand wraps. He knew that much. Every time he let himself think too much about it, it all went back to Medic and his fucking hands.

It was like a switch had been flipped in Scout's brain, and now he couldn't turn it off. He tried like hell, at first. What the fuck was wrong him, thinking about another guy's hands like that? They were just hands. Nothing special, nothing nice about them. Except that wasn't true. They _were_ nice. The problem was not only that they belonged to a man – and Scout was trying really, really hard not to think about that aspect of the situation – but that they belonged to Medic.

_Germs are everywhere_ Medic.

_I have sensitive skin_ Medic.

_Get that away from me, it's filthy_ Medic.

The guy was a neat freak.

Not in his lab, though. Oh, no, not when there was blood and gore and actual really gross stuff lying around. Germs didn't count when the medigun was running, apparently, but god forbid someone left a dirty plate on the table or forgot to wipe their shoes before coming inside. He was always wearing those fucking gloves. He wore his gloves while doing chores. He wore his gloves while cooking. He wore his gloves on the battlefield, and during training exercises. He wore his gloves on his days off. Even at the dinner table, he had them on, which  _had_ to be unsanitary considering everything else he did with them. The only times he didn't wear them was in the showers, and Scout was not willing to go to that extreme just to get a glimpse at some damn fingers.

Not yet, anyway.

But there was a lot of shit that he found himself doing that he would not have done previously.

Three weeks ago, there was no way Scout would have gone out of his way to be around the doctor. Gone out of his way to  _avoid_ him, sure, but not the other way around. So why did he suddenly volunteer for laundry duty, even though it wasn't his turn? His excuse was that the Engineer – whose turn it  _was_ – was already busy with one of his new little projects and nobody wanted to see the Hardhat stressed out. This was true, but it wasn't the real reason.

Laundry duty consisted of pushing a big cart down the hallway and banging on people's doors until they opened up and handed over their dirty sheets and stuff. It was gross, considering they were all men – with the possible exception of Pyro – who spent all day getting sweaty and dirty and covered with blood for a living. Lots of old underwear and grimy t-shirts got tossed into the pile. It was not a fun job. But, no one questioned it when laundry came knocking.

At the cost of having to push a cart of sweaty, stinky laundry around for half an hour and getting yelled at by half his teammates, Scout was able to go down to the infirmary and visit Medic with impunity. No having to come up with a bullshit excuse or keeping a lookout for frog-faced assholes who couldn't mind their own business.

He rode the cart down the slight slope to the infirmary doors and pushed right on in without so much as a warning. Not that it mattered.

Medic was waiting for him just inside, his week's worth of laundry wrapped and contained neatly inside his sheets. He simply tossed them into the cart, thanked Scout for his initiative, and went back to doing whatever it was he did when he wasn't cutting people up or telling terrifying tales of his days as an actual doctor.

And he was wearing his gloves.

To Scout, it was a day of effort wasted. The Doc didn't know a damn thing about his “initiative.” _He_ barely knew a damn thing about his initiative. And now he was stuck shoving a bunch of gross old man panties into the two gigantic washing machines in the sub basement and making sure they were all dried by nightfall. Scout undertook his duty bitterly, sitting on top of the dryer and plotting his next move.

There were a lot of things that he could do, but was not willing to. Creeping on the guy in the showers was one of those things. Scout knew his newfound obsession was pretty fucked up to begin with, but there was a line that he just wasn't willing to cross. Trying to catch Medic sleeping was also right out.

The BLU Spy had gotten in the base once and tried to go through the RED team's medical records. Unfortunately, no one must've told him that the Medic didn't sleep like a normal human. His sleep schedule was erratic at best and nonexistent at worst. The Spy came in the middle of the night, and Medic was wide awake with his tray of surgical instruments close at hand. The screaming kept Scout up all night, and he was pretty sure the Doc's little science fair project was still chainsmoking in the fridge. Trying to sneak up on Medic at night was a terrible idea and he couldn't do it. So Scout had to get a little inventive.

His second attempt to catch Medic gloveless was a little more obvious than he would have liked, but the important thing was that it worked.

Medic had a thing about his birds. There were about seven of them and they all had names that Scout couldn't be bothered to remember. But Medic loved them. He built them little roosts so they could live indoors in his lab. He hung up food and water trays to keep them fed. Most of these were contained to the infirmary, but there were a couple scattered around the rest of the base so that the birds could explore and stretch their wings once in a while. Nothing like drudging to the kitchen for a midnight snack and having a fucking pigeon swoop out of the darkness at you from the top of the fridge.

It was an unspoken rule, however, that the birds were not to go outside unsupervised.

Well, it was spoken  _once_ , at length, and at a very high volume after one of them managed to slip out and get itself blown up on the battlefield. Respawn kicked in, for miraculous and still unknown reasons, but Medic was  _livid_ . That was the only time Scout had seen the man  _truly_ angry, and he decided that he never, ever wanted to see that again. It was another very rational reason for him to be scared of Medic.

So maybe leaving the window open was a shitty thing to do. And maybe it was a little stupid, but hey. The bird was there, the window was there, and the idea just sort of happened. All Scout had to do was offer some encouragement.

Bodily throwing a hooting bird out of a window and slamming it shut immediately afterward was not one of Scout's finer moments, but he had an agenda here. A weird, irrational agenda that he didn't want to think about too much but was desperate to accomplish. With the deed done, all Scout had to do was sit back and wait.

It took Medic all of an hour and a half to notice that something was wrong.

“Euclid!” he called, squinting up at the rafters. “Euclid, feeding time! _Essen!_ ”

Sniper and Heavy, who were just trying to enjoy their snack and had no idea what was going on, looked up as Medic stumbled into the Rec Room. Scout perked up immediately at the sight of him.

He wasn't wearing his gloves.

“Doktor?” Heavy said around his bite of sandvich. “What is wrong?”

“It's Euclid,” said Medic worriedly, as though that explained everything. “I can't find him anywhere. I put out some suet for him, it's his favourite, but he still hasn't come out. Have you seen him?”

Heavy and Sniper exchanged a glance. When they looked to Scout, he shook his head emphatically, eyes as wide and innocent as he could make them.

“Sorry, Doc,” Sniper grunted. “No birds in here.”

“When was last time you see him?” Heavy asked, rising to his feet.

“This morning, I think. I left the door open while I was working – they hate being cooped up for so long – but I thought everyone was there when I counted. You really haven't seen him?”

Medic was wringing his hands together, and Scout was having a hard time focusing on anything else.

His brain slipped into tunnel vision. It didn't matter that Heavy was now standing up and looking at the rafters, or that Sniper was surreptitiously trying to steal the big man's sandvich. The only thing in the entire room that mattered was the fact that Medic's hands were bare, and that they were pressed together, slotting perfectly against one another, skin sliding against skin. His fingers were digging in to the back of his palm, white knuckled, leaving little pale imprints in his flesh for just a moment beneath the thin, dark hair.

Scout only realised his mouth was hanging open when Heavy cried out.

“There!” he shouted, pointing to the closed window across the room. “There is bird!”

And there, indeed, was bird.

Sitting on the right side of the windowsill, tapping impatiently at the glass, was Euclid. Medic exclaimed happily at the sight of him, but Heavy beat him to the window. His thick fingers opened the latch with ease, but he was too slow. The dove launched itself inside and made straight for Sniper, perching immediately on top of his hat. The Australian hollered a string of obscure obscenities and nearly fell out of his chair as he flailed to get away from it.

Euclid took to the air again, cooing wildly. Sniper was still yelling. Heavy was trying to follow the bird with his eyes, half-crouched into something alarmingly similar to his battle stance. Medic was calling to the panicking bird with his arms open as though to accept a lover.

And Scout, in his crowning moment of glory, leapt onto the table and carefully snatched the dove out of the air.

The room fell silent.

As gracefully as he could, Scout jumped down from the table with the bird clasped gently between his hands. With all eyes on him, he quickly crossed the room and stopped in front of Medic. He grinned.

“You lookin' for this?”

It was cheesy. It was obvious, and a little risky. Too close to flirting, Scout realised too late. But Medic wasn't even paying attention to him. He was too busy smiling at Euclid.

In order to take the bird from him, Medic cupped his hands around Scout's own. Immediately, Scout's inner panic shut down. This wasn't the same as the precise, clinical way Medic touched him while he was wrapping his hands. There was a gentleness to it that Scout knew, logically, was all for the bird's sake and his. But it felt like it. For just a moment, when Medic's fingertips were dragging over the back of his hands, when the warmth of the other man's palms was seeping into his skin, Scout felt like it was for him.

The doctor didn't seem to notice the way Scout stood rooted to the spot, hands still held up in front of him, awkward grin frozen on his face. He was too busy cooing back at Euclid, scolding him for running off like that, telling him he should know better than to go outside. Scout remained petrified. His mouth was dry and his heart was hammering. He heard, vaguely, as Medic thanked him profusely, and he was pretty sure he said something in reply, but he couldn't repeat it back if asked. He stood there even after Medic left, after Sniper had righted himself and Heavy had returned to his chair. As his awareness returned to him, he let his hands drop to his sides. There were goosebumps all up his arms as he murmured an excuse and quickly made his way out into the hall.

Halfway to his room, Scout passed a supply closet. He didn't even think about it as he opened it and threw himself inside, falling back against the door.

The agenda had changed.

Whatever it was before, whatever half-baked little ideas about getting Medic to take his stupid gloves off seemed unimportant. Now he had a new goal.

He had to get Medic to touch him.

Scout laughed out loud at the absurdity of it, then clapped a hand over his mouth. He was laughing along in a supply closet, there was no good excuse for it. The last thing he wanted was to get caught.

And he really didn't have an excuse. Not one that he could readily explain. Not even one that he could fully understand. He wanted another man to touch him. Not in  _that_ way – well, maybe kinda - no. No way. Not like that. Just touch. Just... just a touch. But that was still crazy, right? It was crazy. And it was weird. Thinking about stuff like that – it wasn't right.

Scout's hand navigated from his mouth to cover his eyes. He pressed the heels of his palms into his sockets until he saw white, trying to shut his brain up and stop from thinking too much into this. It didn't mean anything. It didn't  _mean_ anything. Medic had pretty hands, yeah, okay, that was weird but manageable. People liked weird things sometimes. His Ma used to date some sleaze who went crazy over her feet, and a couple of his brothers really seemed to like when their girls were bigger around the middle. So maybe Scout just liked hands.

_Medic's_ hands.

He banged his head back against the door in frustration.

Fuck this. Fuck all of this. He wasn't going to think about this right now, or ever. He could just ignore it. They were hands. Everybody had hands. They were good for grabbing stuff and hitting things, and there was nothing pretty about them. Not even Medic's hands. It didn't matter how fucking soft they were, or how warm, or how nice they looked, they were just  _hands_ . 

Scout screwed up his face for a moment, willing himself to forget about this. To ignore it. To shove it away deep down inside himself and not worry about it. He could do that. He'd done it before, loads of times, about weirder shit than this. If he pretended it wasn't there then it wouldn't be. It was that simple. He could do it.

 

He couldn't do it.

To be fair, he tried. He went three whole days without looking at Medic. Or talking to him, or scheming ways to get his attention through bird sabotage. He went to sleep and woke up with a blank mind for three days straight. He just wasn't as careful on the forth day.

And it wasn't actually his fault, either. He wasn't watching where he was going, but that was all. No trickery, no deliberate action, just bad timing and poor spatial awareness.

Medic was behind him. The whole team was in the Resupply Room, loading up for the day's match. Scout was talking to the Demo about an idea he had for a grenade launcher that fired Molotov cocktails. Demo was firmly against it. He thought it was a waste of perfectly good alcohol. But Scout was adamant that it could work, and was demonstrating his plan with wild hand motions and sound effects.

In his excitement, he took a step or two backward and collided with a warm, solid body. Looking over his shoulder, Scout's heart sank.

“Watch where you're going,” Medic snapped, giving him a firm shove before slinging the charge pack for the medigun over his shoulders. Scout swallowed. He knew how much the thing weighed. He'd tried to pick it up once, on a challenge from Spy after calling support work “easy,” and he was quickly proven wrong. The little thing was easily seventy pounds of wiring, tubing, and science that Scout didn't understand. But he knew that it was heavy. And watching Medic just pick it up like that, so easily, then spend the day running around with the damn thing on his back, plus the added weight of the medigun itself...

_Christ, he's strong_ .

Scout stammered out an apology and fairly leapt away from the doctor, placing himself on the opposite side of the room, angry with himself. He shouldn't have thought that. Not here, out in the open in front of his team, and not alone in the dark in his room. It was off limits. Over the line. And it was fucking dangerous.

He heard Spy and Sniper snickering at him, but what the fuck did they know? So what if he looked like a coward. Better they thought it was fear than – than something else. Which it wasn't, it fucking wasn't. He was scared. Just scared, and that was it.

On the battlefield, his fear evaporated.

Scout beat his standing kill streak record by four and only Respawned twice. He ran hard and fast, took risks, used a strategy. And that shit about hard work and pulling your weight that Soldier yelled about in his “team building exercises,” Scout did it. He wore himself out, left breathless by the end of the day. It felt like his feet were going to fall off of his body. But the pats on the back at the end of the match made it all worthwhile. Medic's hand closed on his shoulder, briefly, and when Scout looked at him he was smiling.

Lying in bed that night with his arm over his eyes, Scout could still feel Medic's fingers digging into his skin.

Things only got worse from there.

Being subtle was the least of his concerns now. He didn't care what was going on with him, what it all meant, none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was that feeling of being touched. The feeling of Medic's hands on him. He chased it. Craved it. Whenever he thought he could get away with it he'd put himself in Medic's way, desperate to be shoved to the side or pushed forward, bumped into, grabbed, anything. Anything he could get. It was sick, in a way, what he was willing to take. Medic hit him once, for being in the way and making him fall behind when their teammates needed him. It was a light blow. A sharp smack to the back of the head, like his Ma used to do. But it was enough to knock the breath out of him.

If Medic noticed the heat in Scout's face, he didn't show it. If anything, he probably assumed it was embarrassment. But Scout was long past being embarrassed.

That's how he ended up where he was today, running in circles with the Pyro's flames licking at his heels. The heat was terrible, climbing up the back of his neck and threatening to incinerate his shirt. But he had to keep running. He had to keep the BLU firebug away from the Doc. He had to get another clap on the shoulder, or a blow to the head, hell a damn hug would be ideal but he wasn't even gonna hold out hope for that. Not yet.

It was easy to confuse the Pyro. Their visibility wasn't that great with the mask on, and all it took was a carefully timed feint and a high jump to get around the fucker and blow their brains out the front of their face. It was a quick, messy kill. The victory was short lived.

Scout looked around, hoping that Medic had seen what he'd done. Hoping against hope that maybe – just maybe – the Doc was keeping an eye out for him too.

But Medic was fairly preoccupied with running for his life. Heavy had fallen, and without him as a meat shield Medic was dangerously exposed. The BLU Demoman followed him at a leisurely pace, launching grenades and laughing uproariously every time one hit close enough to make Medic stumble. Scout realised that he'd made a mistake. He'd picked the wrong target. But he had a chance to make up for his error. He could still fix it.

He reloaded quickly and readied himself to run, but never even got to take the first step.

A searing pain ripped through his right thigh as the Sniper's bullet carved its way through muscle and bone. Scout staggered, then screamed when all his weight came down on his injured leg. Medic was a few metres away now, yelling something, but Scout couldn't hear him over the crack of the rifle. Another bullet struck his other leg, and he fell heavily into the dirt.

Oh now _that_ was low. The bastard had kneecapped him. So much for fucking respect and professionalism.

Through his agony, Scout was acutely aware that he was being dragged. Something struck him hard in the face and he managed to open his eyes.

Medic had slapped him.

The doctor was kneeling in front of him, having pulled him out of the direct line of fire, and was now struggling to wield the medigun in such an awkward position. There was a nasty cut on his forehead and one of the lenses of his glasses had been blown out, little fragments of glass embedded in his cheek. Scout wanted to reach out and remove the spectacles before they did any more damage. The look of Medic's face dissuaded him from doing so.

“ _Dummkopf!_ ” he spat, grabbing Scout's ruined leg and wrenching it back into position. “ _Idiot Junge!_ What were you thinking? You were supposed to press forward and follow the Spy, not run around like a -”

“Doc!”

Scout saw the laser dot a second too late. He grabbed Medic's tie, tried to yank him out of the way, but too slow. Hot blood and brain splattered his face as half of Medic's head was blown away.

The doctor slumped to the side, jerked once, violently, and then stilled.

Scout stared, mouth open in shock.

He'd been so close. So fucking close. To saving him, to saving them both. Not that it mattered, the rest of their team was dead anyway and the intel was probably gone, but they could have made it. They could've at least lived to the end.

But death wasn't permanent. Not out here, in the god forsaken gravel pits. As he watched, the red haze of Respawn took over and claimed the man's body, whisking it away to be restored without consequence or pain. But the memory would still be there, and there were some things a person couldn't unsee. It was hard to separate the horror from the impermanence when Scout could still feel the blood dripping down his face.

He looked down and realised that he was still holding Medic's tie in his hand.

Without really knowing why, he immediately stuffed the thing into his pocket. As he did so, he noticed the little red dot trailing slowly up his body, a glowing reminder that the battlefield was no place for sentiment.

As the laser dot traveled up his chest and out of sight, Scout balled his hand around the material in his pocket and hoped the tie would still be there when he Respawned.

 

It was.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> haha wow that got really dark at the end and it wasn't supposed to
> 
> but oh well
> 
> it works


End file.
